" In Buchanan's classical tragedies Montaigne played
a part, while he was a student at Bordeaux. His tragedy of _Jephtha_
achieved exceptional fame in sixteenth century France; three Frenchmen
of literary repute rendered it independently into their own language,
and each rendering went through several editions. Another delusion
which French men of letters cherished, not only during Shakespeare's
lifetime, but through three or four generations after his death, was
that Sir Thomas More, Sir Philip Sidney, and the father of Lord
Chancellor Bacon were the greatest authors which England had begotten
or was likely to beget. French enthusiasm for the suggestive irony of
More's Latin romance of _Utopia_ outran that of his fellow-countrymen.
A French translation anticipated the earliest rendering of the work in
the author's native tongue. No less than two independent French
versions of Sir Philip Sidney's voluminous fiction of _Arcadia_ were
circulating in France one hundred and twenty years before the like
honour was paid to any work of Shakespeare.
Shakespeare's work first arrived in France towards the close of the
seventeenth century. Frenchmen were staggered by its originality.
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